The Mini Van Soap Box

For the last few years my husband has had to travel quite a bit around the holidays. Turning into a bit of a tradition to tell you the truth. This year is no different - and my husband has spent the better portion of November not at home. You get used to it after a while - and as long as the time away isn't all packed together, my daughter, for lack of a better term, accepts the absence.

With my husband out of the house - all things are, of course, left up to me. Pick up and drop off, laundry, dishes, meals, shopping - and as she always does when he is gone - the emergency trip to the doctor. This last time was no different. Seems she's come down with (and I quote the doctor) an "adult sized - full fledged sinus infection" (hence my absence here).

Anyway....years ago, when she was just a baby, I didn't handle the traveling very well. A new time mother and scared of every sound she made, I was always convinced that something was going to happen to her - or worse, something was going to happen to me.

I've gotten over that....a bit. I keep it together during the awake hours, but once I crawl into bed, I will typically just lay there and stare at the ceiling. Inevitably my imagination will get the better of me and I will convince myself that the boogie man has been casing my house and was just waiting for my husband to leave town. Every sound from the house makes me sit up and I turn the baby monitor to deafening levels. I have actually been known to create traps around the house to warn me of intruders. To keep the hours of laying in bed and freaking out to a minimum, I will try to stay up as long as I can and force myself into pure exhaustion before even going to bed.

However, last Tuesday night my worst nightmare was realized. At 3:00 in the morning a man was in my daughter's room.

Instantly awake and alert, I jumped out of bed and grabbed the closest thing I could to pummel the intruder. (I'm sorry to say the lamp has seen better days..kind of forgot it was actually plugged in) I ran down the hallway and burst into my daughter's room.

She's sleeping soundly....and there appears to be no man. Great...Now I'm hearing things.

But then he speaks again..."Where the hell are you!?!"

I'm tiptoeing around my daughter's room - wondering where the hell this asshole is - and how is my daughter sleeping through this..

"I. am. speed", he says.

"Wait a minute....."

It's her freakin' Lightening McQueen race car. Who is "parked" inside her doll house and somehow short circuited or something - because the damn thing won't shut up.

I grabbed him...and the remains of my lamp and went back to my room.

He's now wrapped in two t-shirts and shoved inside a tampax box in my bathroom.